


When The World Is Free

by MissRachelThalberg



Series: Tea & Tropes [1]
Category: The Bletchley Circle, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (TV)
Genre: Beaches, Comedy, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Fluff, Marriage, Picnics, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26192074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissRachelThalberg/pseuds/MissRachelThalberg
Summary: “They’re throwing us a beach picnic, but they also think we’re wives.”Millie, Jean, the San Francisco gay community anno 1956, a beach picnic and a misunderstanding. Crackfic turned into shameless fluff.
Relationships: Millie Harcourt/Jean McBrian
Series: Tea & Tropes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902100
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	When The World Is Free

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly: this is the first of a series of tropey Jean/Millie fics written by me and MsFangirlFace! Trope featured here: "Oh No, They Think We're Married, I Guess We'll Just Have To Pretend!" - featuring the gay community of San Francisco anno 1956.
> 
> Secondly: this probably isn’t at all what Vera Lynn sang about.

_There'll be love and laughter_   
_and peace ever after,_   
_tomorrow, when the world is free._

“Excuse me?”

“They’re throwing us a beach picnic, but they also think we’re wives.”

 _“What?_ ”

Millie sighs with some impatience, drops the white sundress and grabs the red one again, squints at her own reflection in the mirror.

“It’s not that complicated. Edward told me I couldn’t understand what it’s like – I responded that not everyone I ever ran off with was a man. You know that.”

“Yes.”

Millie casts a quick, sideways glance at Jean, who rolls her eyes with some impatience.

“I caught you kissing Susan in the dark, Millie, which you’re well aware of. I do know that. You’re leaving out the operative bit, though.”

Bletchley, January 1943, a cold dark night, the endless war – _of course_ Jean hadn’t forgotten, and equally _of course_ Millie would never stop thanking her lucky stars that it was Jean who caught them that night. She smiles a little, nods briskly.

“Right, so he obviously drew the logical conclusion, which is that we’re wives.”

“ _Wives?_ ”

“Yes! Paramours, squeezes, sweethearts, a thing, an item, going together, betrothed, affianced, whatever they call it in this country – they assume I’m Yankee-doodling your…”

“I think I understand the basic concept,” Jean interrupts drily, one eyebrow raised. Millie nods.

“To be honest, I blame you.”

“Me?!”

“Sure. You offered to make him pea soup, that time right before he was arrested for being a supposed communist. Clearly he saw that as proof of lesbian domestic bliss – he told his friends – here we are. The homosexual community of San Francisco wishes to throw us a beach picnic, _but also_ they think we’re wives.”

“And we can’t correct that impression, I take it?”

Millie throws a meaningful look in Jean’s direction.

“Darling, I get that you may not have had my exposure to these kinds of _milieux_ , but if a gaggle of gay men offer to throw you a party, you graciously accept.”

“Along with your wife.”

“Yes.”

Jean nods, peers at the mirror, straightens her blouse.

“Are you wearing your burgundy scarf with that dress?”

Millie’s taken aback by the non-sequitur, finally turns her head.

“I – yes, probably. Why?”

Jean nods, matter-of-factly, like here’s a new bit of German code and she knows just how to crack it.

“I’ll wear my new jumper. It matches.”

*

They arrive at the stretch of beach – a little while outside the city, away from prying eyes – where Edward, Rusty, and a few other familiar faces are awaiting them. As they get out of the car, it’s Jean, not Millie, Edward reaches for first. He kisses her cheek, holds her at arm’s length.

“So good to see you, Jean. And well done you for getting my favourite cousin here in some semblance of good time.”

Millie grins, rolls her eyes – feels oddly pleased to see Edward like this, so happy, so close, so like she remembers him from their shared childhood, before expectations and badly masked secrets created a distance between them. They recognised each other very early on; they recognise each other again. She opens her mouth to respond with a quip, but Jean beats her to the punch.

“Oh, she can be a good girl when she wants to be,” she responds, not skipping a beat. Her fingers suddenly appear to rest casually on Millie’s lower back, and Millie can only laugh along when the small group of gay men toast Jean like she’s the funniest person they’ve ever come across. Come to think of it, she probably is.

Millie briefly, ever so briefly, wonders what on _earth_ she’s let herself in for.

Soon enough, they’re sitting on a picnic blanket surrounded by an adoring crowd of gay men, and Jean – always prepared, always capable – begins to unwrap the basket she reminded Millie not to touch about seventeen different times. She’s made sandwiches – perfect, lovely, _London_ sandwiches that remind Millie of the world before the war – and baked an enormous fruit cake, and Millie thinks they’ll never get rid of Jean’s gaggle of devoted admirers ever again.

There’s something, she thinks, in a flash of surprisingly humbling self-awareness, about the way she, all of them, have always underestimated Jean in a personal sense, no matter how much they respected her professionally. The bun, the clothes, the glasses – it was too easy, too tempting to them, half a generation younger and so wise, supposedly so wise, about the brave new world. Millie’s learned better since, of course; Jean is always perfectly herself, but that’s an expression of her own brand of private, enviable confidence – not of discomfort and certainly not of naiveté. It’s a mistake she tries not to make anymore, yet sometimes does.

Of course Jean’s at home here; she’s at home everywhere.

The mischief, though, the memory of the fingers on her back – that’s new, and new, to Millie, has always meant tempting, inspiring, irresistible.

“I’m a lucky lady, boys,” she announces, draping an arm casually around Jean’s shoulders as she finishes cutting the cake. Jean, surprised, turns her head and pecks Millie on the lips.

“Yes, you are, dear.”

Checkmate, again.

She freezes, but she’ll be damned if she shows it. Jean would enjoy that far, _far_ too much, and while the older woman is – apparently! – a lesbian icon now, it isn’t Millie Harcourt’s first time at this particular rodeo, either.

Jean’s eyes – dark, unreadable – are still locked on hers, and on impulse, she leans in and gives Jean a kiss, a proper kiss. Jean tilts her head back slightly - tastes of black tea, spear mint, and home.

The boys watch, indulgently; Millie wonders, picks up a sandwich.

Being a clever girl’s kind of her raison d'être, but egg and cress never tasted so much like questions.

*

“Well, after Glasgow, London in the twenties was a revelation – I didn’t know much, but I knew I wasn’t going be marrying a chap, I can tell you that much!”

Laughter, agreement – Millie, a few paper cups of rosé wine in, can’t tell if this is invention or truth or a mixture of both, but she’s riveted alongside the boys.

“And in those days, you could still – well, as a single girl, if you were careful, there were places, you know. More then than now; the War ended many of them. One little place in Soho, been around since the nineties – it was bombed out by Jerry’s V2s, one bright late summer night in 1944. I’d friends working there.”

This, surely – this is the truth, this is the truth of a Jean Millie – bafflingly, shockingly – already knew, then, and yet a Jean she’d missed entirely. She reaches out, unsure if this is acting or not, gives the other woman’s hand the littlest squeeze. Jean casts her a sideways smile.

“It was belonging, that place, even when I couldn’t run the risk anymore, during the War – one knew it was there and one knew one would be there again, some sunny day, as the song said then. It turned out to be a lie; a lot of those songs were.”

It’s Jean’s turn to squeeze Millie’s hand, now, and Millie can’t tear her eyes away.

“I only knew that sense of belonging again when Millie came to find me at the library four years ago. I suppose we, at least, did meet again.”

It probably isn’t at all what Vera Lynn sang about, but it is true, Millie thinks, then – it’s true, it’s true, _it’s all true_ , it wasn’t seeing Susan again which gave her the jolt to stop drifting and start living; it was seeing Jean. It had always been seeing Jean. She isn’t sure what that means here, now, for them, but it is, blindingly, the truth.

She can’t tell if it’s Jean’s truth – Jean, whose very eyes keep their secrets - but it is hers.

*

The sun sets; the fire grows brighter as the sky grows darker, a few of the boys are swimming, it’s peaceful and wonderful and Millie’s arm has found its way around Jean again. She vaguely senses they’re _homosexual goals_ at this particular moment in time; _homosexual married goals_ , and while she’s fucked many a girl in many a dingy hotel room in many a questionable European town, this is a new experience entirely. For one, she’s no longer looking for Susan’s eyes in every woman’s face.

Jean’s head ends up on Millie’s shoulder; she’s not sure when or how or why and she’s not sure Jean knows, either. Some codes are hard to crack; after all, the Nazi army wasn’t run by lesbians, more’s the pity.

In a fantasyland, deep underneath her conscious thoughts, Millie thinks about writing her parents – writing her sister, Valerie, who married a viscount and gave him three kids and counting, quoth the society pages.

 _Dear Mama_ , _I met a woman and I married her…_

_Dear Father, I hereby announce my nuptials…_

_Dearest Val, is this what it feels like to belong, like you always did and I never?_

They’re impossible letters, of course, to three close, distant strangers who no longer expect word from her; Jean and Millie, Millie and Jean, won’t ever make the pages of Debrett’s, and Millie’s nieces and her nephew won’t find their names in its hallowed pages.

But the California air is unhallowed, it’s fresh and bright and new, and Edward – Eddie, who always was dearest to her – is splashing around with Rusty on his shoulders, and his laughter as he shouts something in her direction, as she waves in response, is a balm on her spotty soul.

She tightens her grip on Jean’s shoulder, Jean tilts up her chin, and Millie swears, she _swears_ , Jean knows her thoughts. Jean always knows.

“Jean?”

“Mmm?”

“I do, you know.”

It’s a joke, something other people say, of course; it isn’t, cannot, be a vow, because people like Millie cannot make this kind of vow to people like Jean anywhere on God’s green earth. It’s 1956, and the world is free, but not that free, not just yet.

It is, however, a realisation, an understanding, a truth, and perhaps also very much an admission of what Millie suspects Edward’s understood for far longer.

And she desperately wants to kiss the bride, then, but she’s Millie Harcourt and she can’t stop talking.

“It’s always been you and I, hasn’t it?”

So Jean kisses her, instead – spear mint and tea and wine and fire and _home_ – and Millie knows it always has.


End file.
